Sunday, November 22, 2009

Big switch on my iPhone sync: CalDAV and Exchange server

In the last episode of ‘As the iPhone Turns’ our hero was getting business contacts to the iPhone via PST export to Outlook on home XP to MobileMe to the iPhone. Office calendar data traveled one way via Google Calendar Sync to Google Calendar. Google Calendar and Contacts went to the iPhone via Google’s Active Sync (Exchange Server) clone. Address Book on OS X synced to MobileMe on several machines. iCal was out of the picture.

Today it’s all shook up. I can now use Exchange server to bring office contacts, calendar and email to my iPhone. Since the iPhone can support only one Exchange Active Sync connection I switched my Google Calendar sync to CalDAV; for now office appts still go there via one way Google Calendar Sync. I still don’t use iCal.

Personal Contacts now go via MobileMe to the iPhone. Google Contacts don’t go anywhere (for now).

The downside is that my office contacts no longer appear in OS X Address Book, but the ease of updating and ability to edit on my iPhone makes up for that. My first impression is that CalDAV is a better fit for Google Calendar than Active Sync, and that Exchange sync works better with a true Exchange server than with Google Calendar.

Hope you followed all that, I’m not sure I did.

Update 12/3/09: I've seen one odd behavior that might be a bug. I can see and edit Emily's calendar. So when Emily invited me to an event I at first accepted, then realized I didn't need to see her event and mine. So I deleted the invited even, so only hers remained. Problem is, her appointment then vanished on my iPhone! but it was viewable on her iPhone and on the web.

So it was still around, I just couldn't see it. I removed the "invited, not coming" data from the event and changed it enough to force a refresh, it then reappeared.

I wonder if there's a problem with deleting an invited appointment while viewing the original appointment on another person's calendar.

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